20 
THE LADIES’ FLOWER GARDEN 
beings become animated with the wildest passions. Madden, in his Travels in Turkey , speaking of them, says, 
“ Their gestures were frightful; those who were completely under the influence of the opium talked incohe¬ 
rently ; their features were flushed; their eyes had an unnatural brilliancy; and the general expression of their 
countenances was horribly wild." This violent excitement soon wears off, but the exhilarating effects of the 
opium remain for four or five hours, after which they return to their coffee-house for another dose. The horrible 
effects produced by this constant use of opium have been frequently described by travellers. “ The debility,” 
says Mr. Madden, “ both moral and physical, attendant on its excitement, is terrible; the appetite is soon 
destroyed, and every fibre in the body trembles; the nerves of the neck become affected, and the muscles get 
rigid : several I have seen in this place who have wry necks and contracted fingers, but still they cannot 
abandon the custom. They are miserable till the hour arrives for taking their daily dose.” The quantity of 
raw opium taken by the Turks is almost incredible:—one man, from constantly increasing his dose, has been 
known to take a hundred grains of opium a-day; though four or five grains are sufficient to kill a person not 
accustomed to it. 
In England, where opium is principally used for medicine, it is generally taken in the form of laudanum or 
morphine. Laudanum is made by steeping the raw opium in spirits of wine, or white brandy ; and it is from 
the addition of the alcohol still more exciting than the drug alone. Morphine is the narcotic principle of the 
opium, and it possesses the sedative properties of that drug without its exciting ones. The possibility of decom¬ 
posing the opium so as to separate its narcotic principle from its intoxicating ones, was discovered by an eminent 
German chemist, M. Sertiimer, in 1817 ; and the morphia thus separated has since been in general use in medi¬ 
cine. The commonest preparation of it is called acetate of morphine, and one grain of it is equal to about three 
grains, of laudanum. Too large a dose would produce death by stopping all the secretions. The Turkish opium 
is considered the best for making morphine, as it is found to contain three times more of that principle in any 
given quantity than the opium of India. 
The oil of poppies is made from the seeds, which, as we have before remarked, do not contain any narcotic 
properties; and the growing of poppies for the purpose of making oil from their seeds, forms a regular article of 
field culture in France and the Netherlands. The ground chosen for the culture of the poppies destined for this 
purpose, should be rich (as is required for all oil plants) and yet light ; as the poppy has a long tap root, and 
grows best in soils which it can penetrate to a great depth. The seeds are sown in rows, in the south of France 
in September or October, but in the northern French provinces, and in the Netherlands, they are not sown till 
February or March. In dry seasons the plants are watered; and, at all events, they are frequently weeded, and 
the earth hoed up to them. 
When the capsules begin to harden, and the little valves under the stigmas to open, the season of the harvest 
is arrived; and the proprietor repairs to his field, followed by his wife, children, servants, and in short every 
one belonging to his farm, to gather the seeds. For this purpose they take table-cloths and sheets, which they 
spread out between the lines of poppies as well as the space will admit, several persons holding the cloth at 
each end. Then a person goes on the other side of the line of poppies and bends each head so that the seeds it 
contains may fall into the cloth. This is done with great rapidity, and as soon as the poppies growing opposite 
one length of cloth have discharged their seeds, the cloth is shifted to another length; and each cloth as it is 
filled is tied up for carrying away the seeds. Great care is taken not to suffer any broken part of the capsules to 
